The date isn’t set yet, but you will want to hear this talk!
Technology Doping in Sport
Pretty much everyone has heard of illegal blood doping and drug doping in sport, but have you heard of technology doping? It’s the same basic idea i.e. get an unfair edge that the other competitors won’t have, but this time using tech! We’ll go through some examples/case studies and talk about the impacts of technology doping in sport. We’ll also talk about why this is the “cheating” that sports generally don’t talk about (except for maybe curling) and some people just don’t care about, though they should. For the finale, we’ll talk about where technology is leading us in sport, because we’re sure not leading it.
Dr. Sean Maw is a professor in Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan, where he runs the First Year Engineering Program and teaches design. His research is focused on engineering education, and on sports engineering (hence the Technology Doping talk!). Sean is a bit unusual and hasn’t really grown up yet. He is an active soccer player, swing/ballroom dancer, and ice cream maker. He’s announced speed skating at two Winter Olympics, climbed Kilimanjaro, and rafted down the Nahanni. He designed crash pads for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, as well as skin suits for the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics. He currently researches the physics of curling, trying to solve one of the few modern mysteries in Newtonian physics: why curling stones curl the way they do. Science still doesn’t know.